


Bleeding Darkness

by amhranstoirme



Category: Naruto
Genre: Canon Compliant, Various Naruto Characters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-07
Updated: 2017-08-07
Packaged: 2018-12-12 11:52:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11736498
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amhranstoirme/pseuds/amhranstoirme
Summary: Sort of inspired by TheTartWitch's *Down On Both Knees (hold me down)* story tag: "Naruto can sense dark emotions and maybe sorta eats them" and just Naruto in general.





	Bleeding Darkness

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [down on both knees (hold me down)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11125845) by [TheTartWitch](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheTartWitch/pseuds/TheTartWitch). 



 

 

The first time it happened was an accident. The man was old, not just his age, but everything about him. His haunted eyes, his bent body, his ragged soul, his torn, bleeding, broken heart - they were  old . The man raged at the little boy. It was incomprehensible to a two year old. He didn’t even know what ‘murder’  was , so he couldn’t say he hadn’t done that. It sounded bad, so he didn’t think he’d done that to this old man’s family, but he just didn’t know. The man was enraged at the beginning, but the longer he watched the terrified, confused toddler cowering in the gutter, sucking on a bloodied lip and crying fat, hot tears, the more his fury transmuted. He collapsed, weeping. 

 

And then the child touched him, and it wasn’t as if he had no more pain, but he could feel the easing. He could feel the warmth of his wife’s hand again, he could feel the joy in his little girl’s smile again, see the love between them as they grew older before his eyes. He could hear the laughter of his little grandson. For the first time in two years he could see their faces again, not twisted in anguish, not fading; he could see  them . Their light, their life, their  love . It pushed out the memories of loss; not erased them, but swelled, overwhelming them.

 

The boy cried harder. Black oozed from his eyes, like tears made of darkness. He screamed with the pain that wasn’t his, the  hurt inside the old man changing, flowing into him, twisting and tearing at his insides. When it was over the old man gathered the child, rocking his tiny, unconscious body, apologizing over and over. He didn’t know what else to do, so he took the child to the Hokage Tower, to the office of the Hokage himself. He described what had happened, but the phenomenon wasn’t anything anyone had ever heard of before, and the child was too young to understand the questions that were asked of him. They tried to reproduce the act, but it failed. No one thought any more of it.

 

*****

 

The boy was twelve years old in the blink of an eye. Still so young in so many ways; so innocent, so gullible, so willing to believe. Somehow, through some miracle, he wasn’t the only one willing this time. The teacher was hard on him, but not in an unfair way, necessarily. In the classroom he was more stand-offish, but that could also be chalked up to professionalism; in the ramen shop he was warmer, smiling, even cracking the occasional joke. He was caring, but also careful. He was until  that night. That night he bled for the boy, poured out his heart in tears and words and actions. That night he lit an eternal fire inside of the boy. So when the man who had tricked the boy was down, was out, and the teacher was hugging the child, the boy wanted to give something back.

 

He knew it would hurt. He had tried to do this only once since the old man, but the boy with dark, lonely, tormented eyes hadn’t wanted to feel better. He thought he needed the pain, the anger, the sorrow, the HATE, to make him stronger. It hadn’t worked then, but the boy knew it would work now, because this man wanted to move past his painful feelings. So, under the watchful eyes of several Anbu agents just out of sight in the trees, the boy clasped his precious person’s head between his hands, took a deep breath, and then started drawing. He pulled the shroud of despair, the pall of fury, the patina of blood, off of the memories, and he pushed in the light. He gave back a piece of the fire. Light, warmth, love, filled the teacher, and he remembered the faces of the two people he’d loved best, the two people who had loved him best. He remembered their hugs, remembered being tucked in at night, remembered cakes and toys and ‘I’m so proud of you’. He cried, and the boy cried, too, and the light filled one, while the darkness bled from the other.

 

The night filled with carefully muffled screams. The boy bit his lips until they bled to hold them in. He didn’t want the people he could feel watching to stop him before he finished. Before the scar inside of his precious person healed over. Black rolled down his soft, round cheeks. He whimpered for hours afterward, alone in his bed, staring up at the moon, but he felt no regret.

 

*****

 

The next time he tried to use that - that ability, that power, that  whatever it was, it didn’t take any touch. He wouldn’t have tried to touch the man with the big sword. He wasn’t sure he could do it with just words and want, but it worked. When their eyes connected, it was enough. By now he knew how to hold back screams of pain. The black bled from him in the rain, and the light filled the man; enough to redeem him. Enough so he acknowledged his humanity, and used that humanity to end his suffering, to atone for at least a little of his misdeeds. Only once the thugs had been run off did the boy allow the agony to overwhelm him. He curled into himself that night, in a tree outside the little house where his team had been staying. Under the watchful, concerned, but totally unprepared eye of his squad leader the boy fell apart. He had held in too much, he could feel the black festering under his skin. The full moon bleached the scene into shades of black and white and silver, but even amidst that monochrome landscape, what leached from the boy’s rent skin was visible darkness.

 

*****

 

He used it a little here and a little there, just trying to understand how this  whatever it was worked. He found that the person he used it on had to be willing to heal, to let go of the darkness. He found that he could hold it in, like he’d done at the bridge, but it would be worse later. The longer he waited to bleed out that darkness, the worse it would feel. He also started to notice that it didn’t leave him completely. Some part of him was starting to feel… stained.

 

The old man Hokage asked him about it, what it was, how he used it, what it felt like, why he did it. He answered as best he could. He wasn’t sure he could really make the old man understand all of it, but he did his best. He offered to try it on the Hokage, so he could see for himself, from that side, at least; but the old man only smiled at him fondly and told him to save his power for those who needed him most, those who were most lost in the dark.

  
*****

 

He found out, through trial and error, that he could control, to some degree, how much of the negative he absorbed. He tested his theory out at the end of his fight with the arrogant, cold boy with the silver eyes and the spirit of a bird. Just a nudge, just a trickle, just a match to the candlewick inside of him. He could choose for himself if the fire flourished or burnt out. 

 

It didn’t change the agony that came for the boy later, but he didn’t even care.

 

*****

 

The boy with the red hair was harder. He both did and did  not want to heal. The duality in him made it more painful for both of them. He drew harder than he’d ever tried before. He pulled and pulled and  pulled , desperate. He gave him the words, too, pushing and pushing and  pushing his light into the cracks in the other’s armor. Planting the seed, sparking the fire, and praying for growth with every bit of strength he could muster.  _ Please, please, please, feel it. _ It caught, sickly, but there.  _ Feed it. If you want it to blossom, if you want it to burn, you have to feed it. _

 

He hoped the boy would. He hoped it would work, and he wouldn’t fall to that madness again. This boy was like him in so many small, deep ways. He was like the other, too, the one he’d failed years before.

 

He passed out after the fight. When the screaming started, when the darkness boiled over and started leaking out, they had to tie him down. It lasted a full two days like that. When he came to, when they asked him, he told them it would always be worth it, and he would never stop trying to bring light to the dark. They told him one day the darkness would be too much, and he would kill himself trying to heal it. He didn’t say it out loud, but in his heart he thought that might be worth it, too...

 

*****

 

He failed again. The boy with the eyes. No matter how hard he pulled on the darkness, no matter how hard he pushed with the light, they were just caught in a cycle of hurt, a cycle of vicious rage and hate and  _ burn it all to get to  him . _

 

He bled for days. He bled, and still he felt stained, corroded. He willed himself to bleed  more , if it would help, if it would bring the other back to the light. He bled black and red and despair and failure and  _ I broke my promise . _

 

*****

*****

 

As it was wont to do, time passed. The boy grew, and his heart grew, his fires grew, both that one within him, and those he’d planted outside of him. Small lights that shone out, and caught on in others through the ones he’d touched, always spreading. 

 

*****

 

He was surprised when he got the news. Surprised, and happy, and proud, and maybe a little jealous, but he was sure he’d be forgiven for that. The boy with the red hair, he’s seen him a few times, and watched the small fire inside of him grow little by little. That one had fed his fire well, and created a roaring blaze of himself, to shelter his people with.

 

Then came the threat. Like a pail of water tossed on a campfire, a force had come to extinguish that precious flame. It burned in  him , the loss, and the burning echoed in the stain, beating and bleeding darkness through his veins. They were able to retrieve the Kazekage, and even return his flame to his body, so the boy was filled with gratitude and relief and happiness,  bursting with it.

 

But alone with himself that night he trembled and he wept. It was spreading. Darkness.

 

*****

 

He failed again. He raged. He surrendered to the Beast inside of him, the one that was himself, and the one that was not. It had strength, the surrender. It wasn’t enough. The Snake repelled him. The Apprentice mocked him. The boy with the eyes rebuffed him again. He could feel that well of darkness. He was almost sure he would drown in it one of these days.

 

Maybe then, with his light, with his fire, he could boil it away?

 

*****

 

There was more loss. There was always more loss. It was mounting. It was piling up around him, choking him, but the worst of it yet left him crumbling. Lost. His fire needed feeding, but he couldn’t summon warmth to give it through the tears. He’d called the man by many names, not all of them complimentary. Heavens knew, they hadn’t always seen eye to eye. But the old man had been his, and he had been the old man’s, in a different way from the other relationships the boy had built. One minute they were sharing a popsicle and a sunny afternoon.

 

Then he was gone.

 

_ He left me in the dark. _

 

*****

 

Darkness  everywhere . How was he supposed to heal  this ? Precious flames extinguished among the rubble. Desperate fighting, desperate cunning, desperate hope.

 

A flame that had been nurtured, however unknowingly, by his own. She came, with words of Love, to battle Pain. She came to save him. She came to die.

 

When she was cut down before his eyes, the stain didn’t just bleed through him. It  BECAME him.

 

There was light in the darkness, and through that light, there was a chance. A spark reborn. A flash. 

 

This man, this Pain, thought he was darkness. The boy showed him darkness, showed him rage and pain and  HATE greater than either of them. And then, even though it hurt, it hurt more than it had ever hurt before, he drew darkness out of Pain. He gave light with words.

 

The boy gave light, and Pain gave life.

 

It had never been so obviously worth the bleeding.

 

*****

 

_ Can you see it now? What’s in my heart? _

 

_ Can you see that if you and I fight, we will both die? _

 

_ Save up all of your hatred, and throw it at  me ! Only I can take all of that hate that’s inside of you. _

 

_ That is my purpose. _

 

*****

 

The Waterfall of Truth washed him clean, in a way. The stain was clear. He’d learned how to accept the darkness within him, and by doing so, he’d learned how to let go of its lingering traces.

 

He faced the greatest darkness he’d met to date, too. He hadn’t won that battle yet, not really. The others may have called the game of tug between himself and the Fox a ‘win’ because he had control of the chakra, but the push and pull was still going on.

 

There wasn’t time for bleeding, there was more darkness outside. He was needed.

 

*****

 

The Savior, they called him. He brought light with him, visible now to all. He’d even planted light inside of the Beasts, all of them. There were places he couldn’t plant light; inside of the eyes of a Goddess, for example. There was neither light nor darkness in there, and there was both. The Seal would work though. The Seal would hold her.

 

Now he had other matters to concern him. It was time.

 

This fight had been long in coming. This push and pull. One last chance to plant, to spark, to make it  grow . The boy with the eyes.

 

_ I will never give up, because… You are my friend. Because I am your friend.  _

 

_ Your one and only friend. _

 

_ It’s time. Throw all your hate at me now. Send all of your darkness against me. _

 

It burned. It burned and it boiled and it  bled . It went on and on and on.

 

Until it didn’t.

 

Until they were just too tired of the fighting. Until the other boy just couldn’t cling to that pain and anger and loss and hate anymore. Until the light of a constant fire beat back the darkness of a fickle tide. Until he planted, he sparked, and they  grew .

 

_ No more of this… No more bleeding darkness. _

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, some of them are mentioned by Titles (Xkage, etc), but no names are used, just descriptors. It's weird like that on purpose because I'm weird like that.
> 
> I hope I did the whole *Inspired By* link thing right?


End file.
